Explore
Ketchikan’s Rich Native American Culture
The southernmost city along Alaska’s famed sheltered Inside Passage, which extends for more than 1,000 miles, Ketchikan is a portal into the state’s rich mosaic of Native American cultures. Just a 90-minute flight north of Seattle and embedded within a vast temperate rainforest—one time zone over but seemingly worlds away—Ketchikan offers immersive encounters with such cultures as the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people. The past, present, and future of these cultures are all on display within the city and in nearby villages and islands.
Native American cultures have been present in southeast Alaska for thousands of years. The first group to arrive were the Tlingit, followed later by the Haida and Tsimshian, all of whom lived off the area’s abundant resources, including salmon, shellfish, and wood from the surrounding Tongass forest. Only in the 1800s did the area’s native populations first encounter white missionaries and miners; soon afterwards, these groups were forced to adapt to European ways of life in order to survive and were stripped of basic rights like speaking their language at school.
“NATIVE AMERICAN
COMMUNITIES HAVE BEGUN
TO RECLAIM THEIR CULTURE THROUGH REVIVAL ...”
Alaska Airlines and Delta Air Lines offer daily 90-minute flights between Seattle Tacoma Airport and Ketchikan. If you are up for an adventure on the way, Alaska Marine Highway brings passengers and their cars (dogs allowed) from Bellingham to Ketchikan via the Inside Passage.
GETTING THERE
ALASKA has gone to great lengths to ensure that travelers can travel more safely during the pandemic, having started the
vaccination process early, and the
state is now offering free vaccines
to visitors who are 12 & older.
But in the last few decades, members of the Native American communities —ancestors to 20 percent of Ketchikan’s 13,700 residents—have begun to reclaim their culture through the revival of craftsmanship, historical tours, and performing arts.
Ketchikan is home to the world’s largest collection of Pacific Northwest totem art. Some of the most beautiful examples can be found at the Totem Heritage Center, where 33 poles, which date back to the 19th century and were carved out of the region’s native Western red cedar, were retrieved from abandoned village sites by the Alaska State Museum and the Alaska Native Brotherhood with the permission of native elders.
Visitors can take classes in native arts like cedar bark basket weaving and carving and engraving. Continue your education on the edge of the city at the privately-owned Potlatch Totem Park, which has its own selection of preserved totem art and a carving shed where you can see contemporary totem artists at work. The adjacent Totem Bight State Historical Park has a recreation of a 19th-century Native Alaskan village on former Tlingit fishing grounds.
Hear a personal perspective on Ketchikan’s indigenous history on a walking tour with a guide of Tlingit descent through Where the Eagle Walks, a small business founded by Alaska-born Joe Williams Jr. Your guide will share their own personal family stories of Ketchikan while leading the way to storied stops including an important salmon ladder and the former red-light district of Creek Street. Some tours go to the nearby Saxman Native Village, a Tlingit village about 2.5 miles of Ketchikan. The village’s Tribal House is the site of traditional dance demonstrations by the Tlingit Cape Fox dance group. Then head to the carving house to observe the works in progress by renowned totem artists including Nathan Jackson, whose poles can be found as far away as Chicago and Germany.
Take a day trip to Annette Island 15 miles to the southwest of Ketchikan to visit Metlakatla, which was founded in 1887 by Tsimshian as the only Indian reserve in Alaska. Allen Marine Tours offers a cultural and wildlife excursion by boat; guests will see humpback and orca whales among other endemic species before heading ashore to a remote beach. While on the island, you’ll walk through the rainforest and learn about traditional intertidal harvesting before sampling local delicacies such as reindeer sausages and salmonberry jam by a beach bonfire.
Armed with a foundation in the region’s Native American cultures, you can visit the shops and galleries that support regional talent and get a better sense of how crafts are interpreted by modern artists and collectors. For more traditional pieces, the locally-owned Arctic Spirit Gallery sells some of the best examples of work by indigenous artists, which might include a salmon drum painted by hand by Haida artist Cindy Beck or a limited edition print depicting a brown bear or a short-eared owl by Tsimshian Raven, Haida, and Aleut descendant Allie High.
For a glimpse at contemporary Ketchikan artisanship, head to Crazy Wolf Studio, whose owner, Ken Decker is a Tsimshian artist born and raised in Ketchikan who has been creating Northwest Coast design art for more than 20 years. He works in various genres of art ranging from drums, prints, bentwood boxes, bowls, ceremonial hats, paddles, masks and more. His downtown shop also sells hand carved totems by carvers from across Southeast Alaska—talismans that will beckon you back to this otherworldly destination on the edge of the Pacific.
Totem Pole FAQ
What are totem poles?
What are they like up close?
How are they carved?
What is the cultural style of Ketchikan’s totem poles?
What are totem poles?
Monuments created by Native American tribes – that represent and commemorate ancestry, histories, people or events. A totem pole typically features symbolic and stylized human, animal, and supernatural forms. They are primarily visual representations of kinship, depicting family crests and clan membership that don’t so much tell a story as they serve to document stories and histories familiar to fellow community members.
Most totem poles stand between 9ft and 50ft tall, with the tallest sometimes topping 60ft. Made of rot-resistant red cedar, totem poles typically last about one hundred years before they begin to disintegrate. For that reason, most totem pole designs that people recognize today were, for the most part, developed in the last 200 years. Most historians and other experts agree that totem pole carving did not reach its peak until the nineteenth century, when many coastal Native Americans were involved in the fish and fur trade with Europeans.
What are they like up close?
Carving a totem pole requires not only artistic skill, but an intimate understanding of cultural histories and forest ecology. Before a cedar tree is harvested for a totem pole, many coastal Native American communities will perform a ceremony of gratitude and respect in honor of the tree. Several trees may be inspected before a particular tree is chosen for its beauty and character. After a tree is felled, the wood is debarked and shaped using implements such as adzes, axes, chisels, carving knives, and chainsaws.
How are they carved?
The unique design elements or patterns used by traditional Tlingit carvers belong to what has become known as the Northwest Coast form-line style. This style portrayed creatures from the natural world in varying degrees of realism. Often they were split or fragmented with eyes, joints, fins, feathers or some other easily recognizable feature delineated with broad black form-lines. Traditional colors were a green-blue and red.
What is the cultural style of Ketchikan’s totem poles?
TRADITIONAL
CONTEMPORARY
